From Happiness to Disaster

July 26, 2007 2:38 PM

The International Disaster Databaseprovides a complete summary of natural and technological disasters from 1900 to 2006. You can see disaster summaries by country or by disaster, such as volcanoes, industrial accidents, transportation accidents, or floods, along with even more detailed data. If this is too much, the tonic is the World Database on Happiness which will allow you to look at happiness trends among countries and happiness maps [prev.].
posted by blahblahblah (2 comments total)

This is really cool. Thanks, blahblahblah.
posted by dersins at 5:57 PM on July 26, 2007

Hmmm... so few comments. Okay, here are some happiness highlights as grist for the mill:

The Italy, Denmark, the US, France and Spain have gotten happier over the last 30 years, Portugal and especially Belgium have gotten sadder.

The average American will have 57 happy years out of their life, Austrialian, around 61, Zimbabwean about 11.

And the average epidemic for the last century killed 21,000 people in Asia, 52,000 in Europe, and 960 in the Americas. So you may be less happy in America, but you don't get killed as much.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:32 PM on July 26, 2007